Exercise tracking app Strava has defended itself from accusations of accidentally leaking highly sensitive information that discloses the location and movement of USA and other worldwide militarypersonnel with its "global heatmap".

Strava'sheatmap is a visual representation of one billion of its users' activities equating to 17 billion miles (27 billion kilometres).

Strava says the onus is on the public to mark their own data as private, or to create their own privacy zones to ensure sensitive data doesn't go public.

The appearance of military bases on the heatmap suggests that large numbers of military personnel across the globe have been publicly sharing their location data.

Manyfitness enthusiasts are probably aware of Strava, an application that lets them track their routines, complete with precise positioning data.

Strava has yet to comment on these revelations but speaking frankly this has more to do with user behaviour than Strava tracking data.

Nathan Ruser, an Australian university student who first highlighted the issue, said he came across the map while browsing a cartography blog last week.

Ruser tweeted: "If soldiers use the app like normal people do, by turning it on tracking when they go to do exercise, it could be especially risky".

Security and privacy researcher Lukasz Olejnik pointed out that anonymising location and fitness data is challenging and should always be considered on many different levels before publishing even aggregated data. The freely-available heatmap, which can be accessed here, can zoom into any part of the world and detail the cycling or jogging routes of its users.

The Pentagon has encouragedmilitary personnel to use Fitbits, the Post reported.

"DOD takes matters like these very seriously and is reviewing the situation to determine if any additional training or guidance is required", the Pentagon said in a statement, without directly confirming that US troops had used the fitness trackers.

In a post about the update in November, Strava said the update would include "six times more data than before - in total 1 billion activities from all Strava data through September 2017". "I expected it to languish in wonk circles and open source circles until the US government quietly fixed the problem, but instead it seems to have blown up a lot more than I would have thought".

Popular news

EasyJet chief cuts salary as airline reveals 52% gender pay gap
So let's call this an important start - both in message and in action - aimed at keeping the critical conversation going. The gender pay gap in EasyJet is now 51.7%, but the budget airline says this is not because of unequal pay for women.Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Deputy FBI Director McCabe, a Trump target, steps down
The White House was not involved in McCabe's decision, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday afternoon. Trump has blamed McCabe for influencing the decision not to criminally charge Clinton for her use of a private email server.Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Meryl Streep Joins HBO's 'Big Little Lies' Season Two
Although HBO has not announced the rest of the cast, it said it expected most of the actors from the first season to return. The scripts are based on a story by Liane Moriarty , author of the Big Little Lies book that the original mini was based on.Tuesday, January 30, 2018